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Forest City Ratner Will Take Your Homes Now, kthxbye

So the state Court of Appeals has today ruled in favor of Forest City Ratner in the eminent domain case brought against the Atlantic Yards development. (We had earlier discussed the dubious merits of using eminent domain for private development.) This is not entirely unexpected; however this does not by any means mark the end of Develop Don’t Destroy Brooklyn‘s attempts at derailing the project by yapping around Bruce Ratner’s ankles until they draw enough blood to topple him (this is a metaphor, for the many lawsuits).

Last month, the Brooklyn Paper published a handy cheat-sheet to the major pending legal actions, including two in response to June’s renegotiation of the terms between Forest City Ratner and the MTA, which drastically and unilaterally changed the terms of the sale of public property to a private developer (to favor the latter, natch, because shit no the MTA doesn’t need to squeeze money out of its resources), and seemed to offer Ratner an out on affordable housing. With their lawsuits, activists have delayed the project considerably, pushing its start-date back into the current economic climate, and so forcing reductions in the promised project and public benefits, all of which serves to underscore the extent to which this project was always pretty much by the rich for the rich. But on the plus side, basketball! Ooh, bouncy bouncy.